Black Mud
by LeakySneakyOprichniki
Summary: It's thickly plastered against the edges of your side-turned faced, the bitter taste of dirt on your tongue, the scent of blood in your nostrils; landed in black mud.


**Black Mud**

* * *

Your voice strains over the periodic cut of wind. Your breaths freeze the moment they come into bitter contact with November night air. You huff and puff to distract yourself; luke-warm steam, then cold as it condensates under your stinging nostrils. You shout loud enough for echoes to flutter hollowly over the trees like black forest crows. They rebound to you. You can hear the frustration in your own voice. How did you get stuck feeding the stupid cat again?

Sighing you repeatedly shake the bag crumbled in your small hand. Eyes squint through the forest line for any sign or silhouette of a semi-wild cat. Bed time was in ten minutes, and you did not have time to look for some ungrateful feline. Sighing twice, you heave the bag into both hands, and perch it on a wooden patio chair. You shiver staring briefly at the dark skin of your bare feet. The rotting, paint chipped wood of the patio creaks and burns wherever you step. This was only supposed to take a few minutes. It _will _only take a few minutes, you affirm if only a little nervously.

You wave an 'I'll be back' to the grubby porch dog and don't mind yourself to slip on any shoes. You'll get the cat, feed the darn thing, and you'll be in the bed before anyone has a chance to fuss over the strictly enforced curfew. The cat couldn't have gone far, and the worst thing you could think of roaming the woods at night were a few wild bucks, maybe pad-footed bob cats. Wild brutes are possible to stumble upon; however, you weren't planning to look that far.

Stepping out carefully to avoid bent nails, you slip past a pile of old rusted iron and briskly make your way to the forest line, all the while calling for the cat. You spook for a short instant, turning to look behind you. It was odd, the farther you walk, the louder the porch hound wails. You wave it off. Promising the senseless thing that _you'll be right back._

* * *

Cat

Cat

Caaaaaaaatttttttttttttt.

You sway back and forth lazily draping your arms around your body. The hard, frozen forest floor burns just as coldly as the porch did and for a moment you wonder why you didn't think to put on shoes. Oh yes, this _wasn't_ supposed to take this long. You grumble in irritation, teeth chattering, lips quivering, and goose flesh emerging on the surface of your skin under a simple layer of night clothes. Quite frankly, at this movement, you could care less about the cat, and yet you press on moving past the first layers of imminent evergreen trees.

Your attempts at distraction switch from different aspects of the scenery. You look behind and duck over old oil cans, shredded tires, stumps (with little claw marks), frozen water worn logs, fruitless mulberry bushes, but no cat. Unfortunately graced with half-efforted determination, you searched further hoping to spot the languid metronome of a tabby tail. Your wondering eyes tilt along with your chin to survey the night sky. The shrunken size of the moon glints in and out behind obese, black snow clouds. You gradually adjust your head down the clusters of immense trees. Their pine needles and fallen limbs crunch and snap under your unprotected, numb toes. The air around you becomes dense with something eerie ominous, like entering barbed territory.

Your breath, heavy from leaps and bounds over an assortment of organic objects, pours from your mouth like thick cigar smoke and disperses, mixing with a low set fog that embellishes the middles of shedding tree trunks. You have never gone this far into the back wood lands before. Where_ was_ this cat? Now it really didn't matter. You turn to track your way back, but discover that you have undeniably no idea where you are, or where you had come from. In addition, it's _dark. _Dark enough that it takes your eyes several moments to adjust. What little light had come from the moon is shrouded by high, frost coated pine branches

This unsettles you deeply.

Cold sweat makes the curly ends of your hair stick to your forehead and the side of your cheeks. Your heart pounds beneath the cover of your sternum. The heightened urge to remove yourself from ever being here, in the dark, and out of good direction eats at the back of your mind. You need to leave. Leave _Now._ Go back home, before anyone notices you were ever gone. The cat could wait till morning; you will take the blame for one empty stomach. You desperately crave the sensation of safety, not whatever this chilling sensation was.

* * *

_**Stop.**_

* * *

What was that?

You pause an eerie silence rings in your ears. You stand as still as your shivering body will allow, listening to the muffled sounds of the night. Suddenly, you don't feel alone wandering over two-hundred acres of forest land. You peer in a semi-circle, afraid to look behind at what you might find. Mountain lions, maybe a pack of stalking wolves, something that would want to devour a bed time snack like yourself.

The thought makes you shiver, the low temperature not being the reason. A certain brand of trepidation leaks from your pores, running down your forehead in icy beads and uncomfortably staining your underarms. You continue walking not caring where as long as you keep moving. The longer you pause to listen, the more urgent this ill-omened feeling becomes. There is no glare of headlights from the interstate, no annoying calls from home, and no street posts to line mud-covered dirt trails. Just you, painfully heavy silence, obnoxious crickets, no obvious direction, and the-oddly-unidentified- for-which-you-are-sure-is-lurking-just-as-silently-at-a-distance.

You try a mildly volumed "Hello", but soon decide against it. It strikes you that it may not be the best decision to let this follower have any indication of where you are; whatever it was. Uneasily, you rub the sides of your forearms taking more careful steps and detouring things that make any amount of noise when stepped through. What you didn't mind before now, makes you absolutely paranoid. It takes a bit of effort to tip on toes that are so cold, you can mildly sense any feeling in them. Broken twigs stab the soles of your feet sinking under your weight into patches of thick black mud. Perhaps feeling isn't totally lost. You hiss between clenched teeth balancing on one foot to assess any damage. With one hand you quickly brush leaves and dirt from your heels, and with eyes to the ground, you notice foot prints.

There are fresh muddled ones planted in the black chunky, damp dirt. You understand that those are yours. From what you can concentrate on, without startling from swaying tree shadows, there are _other_ ones trailing in the opposite direction of your own. You blinked into the darkness straining your eyes to examine them. They are _enormous_ foot prints, long, not wide, and neatly (almost barely) pressed into a clean mold. Maybe it's a man's shoe print? You only knew notable hunters to walk that lightly and uniformly over ground.

You stuck your foot over one curiously, almost losing your balance as you followed the print's duplicates deeper into the thickets hoping that they'd lead you back to the forest line. You sway clumsily finally spotting the last separate set of tracks to litter the earth below. You sigh in brief relief. Cat tracks, slightly older than the shoe prints, line by twos and fours into the scattered brush. Each track for a little while seems to follow the other, until the shoe prints completely change directions, and the cat paws just disappear altogether. You can't comprehend.

It's hopeless; there goes your lead on the freaking cat, and your slight chance to make it back home. Your breath catches in your throat and urgency returns to burn in your blood. Fairly rushed, you motivate yourself to move past it. Don't stand still. Keep moving. Something _really is_ following you. You can sense it in the back of your tightened wind pipe and in the frozen core of your very bones. You have no real choice on directory and turn as the foot prints do.

Your sprint gives way to heavy breathing. You shiver uncontrollably, moisture stinging in the corners of your eyes. Everything that moves makes your heart lurch. The shadows and fog obscure your already poor vision, and whenever the moon peeks from behind a thick upper canopy, it frightens you more than not being able to see. You return to your old tactics of distraction, to focus on something a little less unnerving. It's a mistake, because the farther you follow the tracks the more you notice

blood in black mud.

* * *

It's in and around the tracks. It begins as light splatters over leaves and moss, but soon becomes thicker and more heavily pooled in the mud imprints. Your tired sprint dwindles into a begrudging drag. What else is there to do? Where else to go? You pick up your desperate run again. Your throat and sinuses are burning and raw from your ragged breathing. The sting in your tear ducts blurs. Eyes frantically scan for tracks that are becoming more and more opaque till untraceable. There's a forecast of something horrific terribly near, and rapidly closing in. You shriek pitifully from the new range of dexterity fear gives you.

A misstep coats the bottoms of your feet in half-dried blood, your pants leg latches on an anonymous object and sends you tumbling stiffly to the soggy earth. You cough, head dizzy, and eyes completely bleary. Your dilated pupils dart to your upturned sides. Your head has collided against something slick; blood and black mud, it plasters your hair to your head and your clothes to the right side of your body. You haphazardly move to scramble to your feet, but discover the fabric of your pants is still trapped under whatever had caused you to stumble. Hyperventilating you swivel on your back to see where you are strongly snagged.

You kick and absolutely _nothing _budges. What holds you in place is a polished black shoe. Vision still struggling to center, you stare following the shoe up to a leg. A leg so elongated you think it will never end, to a towering looming body. You hold your breath, because in an instant you've forgotten how to properly breathe. Not a mountain lion, not a wolf, not a bob cat, not even a hunter. Something, perceptibly not human (no human could ever be this alarmingly tall), dressed in a solid black suit.

The moon unceremoniously emerges again from behind the judgment of clouds lighting what little you can see. You don't see his—it's face, as white and blank from a distance as the moon its self. No eyes to speak of, but you can sense him watching you _closely._ Waiting for what you'll do. Screech? Fight? Cry?

The fractional, paced movement of his other arm distracts you from his other, the one that's going to take you. Your eyes widen, face twisting into ugly anguish. Clamped tightly in his pearly white left hand is the bloody, mangled corpse of a grey tabby cat.

Screech and cry it is.


End file.
